Ahead of Apple’s 3rd Quarter earnings report due later this month, fans of the Cupertino, CA computer company have reason to believe Big Mo is on their team, according to reporter Charles Jade at Ars Technica. Citing information available from the web metrics firm Net Applications, Jade reports significant increases in market share for both Mac OS X and Apple’s Safari web browser over the past year. Based on recent trends, the percentage of Mac OS X users should break the 8% mark in July, having gained nearly 2 full percentage points in the past year. Intel Macs posted gains as a percentage of Macs in use as well, possibly accounting for much of the reasoning behind Apple’s decison to make its Snow Leopard OS update, due in the spring, an Intel-only affair.

Also, remember that these numbers are for web usage which means they include any computer on the web, both ‘work’ and ‘home.’

This means that Apple’s market-share in the home market, while unknowable from these numbers, is most certainly into the double-digits already.

And that’s the number that really matters to Apple…when someone chooses what computer to bring home, it looks like more than 10% are already choosing Macs.

About the author

Lonnie Lazar is a writer-musician-web designer-attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

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